


Happy Birthday, Mistress

by Fran_fic



Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Slavery, F/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Slavery, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 00:07:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1489417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fran_fic/pseuds/Fran_fic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A slave has nothing to give, and doesn’t even have a right to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Birthday, Mistress

**Author's Note:**

> The warnings are given for the themes of the story. The main character reminisces about harsher situations in the past, but no such scenes take place in the story’s present. It’s not particularly graphic on the whole.

Erin pulled, each jerk harder than the one before, but the tough stem refused to break off, and suddenly he found himself holding the whole plant in his hand, roots and clods of earth and all. His sheepish look changed into an angry one as he swore and threw it away. He should have brought a pair of scissors.

In theory picking flowers had seemed the easiest thing in the world, but he found the meadow behind the stables full of booby traps and hostile flora. Earlier he’d stepped in a hole and fallen flat on his face. Then the first flower he’d tried to pick had turned out to hide needle sharp thorns under its deceptively innocent-looking pink petals. It had taken him a good amount of time to pull them out of his fingers. It had hurt, too. He would never manage to get a decent bunch together before his mistress woke up if Mother Nature kept refusing to cooperate like this.

The whole thing was stupid anyway. Slaves had no business celebrating their owners’ birthdays. It wasn’t like they could gift them with anything. Any object a slave might possess already belonged to their masters, or mistresses, by extension. How could you give someone something they already owned? He could say ‘congratulations, mistress’ as she woke up, of course, and he would, but… That sort of formal politeness only, which he’d been harshly trained into, wouldn’t really encompass what he wanted to convey to her. He could try to be extra attentive today, and see to it that his services would be better performed than ever, but, really, that was what he strove to do all the time, so... She wouldn’t notice it was suppose to be a present, of sorts, Erin guessed.

Besides, many owners – probably most of them – would most likely consider it insulting if their slaves wanted to celebrate them. It would be beneath them to acknowledge such a thing. His mistress was… Well, Erin wasn’t sure what she thought of such things. He’d been in the house less than a year, and this was the first birthday of hers for which he would be around. 

He looked out across the meadow, and its wealth of high summer bloom, and felt even more like an idiot. Free people gave each other flowers when they celebrated something, he’d seen that often enough, but as he couldn’t buy his mistress one of those fancy bouquets, he’d thought it a good idea to pick some by his own hands. He’d got out of bed a few hours earlier than normal this morning, only to do that. Yesterday it had seemed like a good idea, now… not so much. Yesterday he hadn’t thought she could be angry at such a gift, but now he wasn’t so sure. If she would be insulted… if she would punish him for it even… 

Erin shivered. 

It wasn’t that she was a scary person. On the contrary, she was always very calm and gathered, rarely raised her voice and almost never lashed out in anger. She could be very cold, aloof and condescending, if she didn’t like someone, he’d seen that, but to him… She’d always been kind to him, and she’d been patient in the beginning, when he’d been new to the rules and traditions of the house and had made plenty of stupid mistakes. There _was_ certain strictness to her, but he could still count the times she’d used a cane – or any other implement of pain – on him, on both hands. 

That was saying something. 

No, Erin might not have reason to fear her, but he did anyway like he did any free person, just because of that fact. It was ‘slave fear’ he thought, a deep seated kind of fear that they all possessed, and the ones who didn’t… Well, they had something wrong with their heads, anyway. Some slaves let that fear take them over, some denied it, but he’d always seen it as something almost good. It helped him know his place, and stay out of trouble. 

Erin wasn’t all that sure that this was his place though, that was the problem. As he stood there and imagined what it would feel like if he gave her the flowers, and she dealt him a stinging slap in return, dismissing him to wait for further punishment, the ‘slave fear’ spread through his body. He should just go back to the house before someone missed him and forget all about this. 

It turned out to be one of those times where he ended up not listening to that inner voice of reason, and he bent down again and started picking. He’d got this far, he might as well go on.

Finally he managed to get a large bunch together and hurried back to his mistress’ quarters, which he shared, being allowed the use of a small room of his own. Well acquainted with every corner and object in those rooms by now, it didn’t take him long to find a suitable vase in a cupboard. He filled it with water, placed it on her breakfast table, and stuck the bunch in it. 

Erin stepped back to critically examine the result. It didn’t look right, did it? He should just throw it in the garbage. If he did that now, before anyone else woke up, no one would ever know. However, he’d gotten this far, and he _really_ wanted to show her... Yes, what was it that he was so desperate to show her? He wasn’t sure. That he was proud to belong to her, of course, and that he was grateful she treated him so well, that he respected her, that… 

Oh, he’d better not go there. 

Shaking his head, as if he literally wanted to push those thoughts out, he threw all his concentration into trying to make the bunch of wild flowers look as nice as possible.

His predecessor would have been better at this, Erin thought. She’d been an elderly woman that had taken care of the mistress since the mistress had been a small child. He hadn’t really replaced her. She’d asked to be allowed to retire, and the mistress had agreed. In the few weeks that she had stayed on, to teach him her work, he had felt no animosity from her. No, she’d had no ill feelings towards him, but she’d often enough told him she thought him a strange choice for the job. ‘Why, a young man in his mid twenties didn’t have the right touch and mind to serve a fine lady, such as the mistress, in a proper way’, she’d said. She had often smacked his fingers when she thought he didn’t handle the mistress’ delicate underwear delicately enough, or mixed up the forks at the mistress’ dinner plate.

Erin had done his best to prove his predecessor wrong during those weeks, but he was still quite certain that she’d left the main house – and the mistress in his hands – with not a small amount of worry. She would most surely have smacked his fingers at this uneven bunch, he thought, trying to rearrange the flowers for the hundredth time.

To him, it hadn’t been the same mystery why a man had been chosen. The mistress was not so inclined that another woman satisfied her in certain ways, but a young man would. Apparently, the mistress had thought it a nice addition to the services her slaves normally provided and the master had agreed to it. 

The rich and refined couple had together selected him at the slave dealer’s, and had thoroughly examined and questioned him before money was exchanged and papers signed. Erin had thus been informed of this part of his duties before he’d even set foot in the house. That hadn’t calmed him down in the least.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to have sex with a woman. Erin’s two previous owners had both been men, but the first one hadn’t been interested in him in that way. He’d thought him too young for one thing, but was probably uninterested in males altogether. However, his first owner had also been the master of a large household with many slaves of both sexes. In spite of typical teenage awkwardness, he’d soon lost his virginity to a slave girl his own age. 

It hadn’t been the last time Erin visited the girls. 

His second owner had been a young single man, living an outgoing life in an apartment in the city. He had, in contrast, been very much interested in his new slave. Whether Erin had liked it or not, he’d had to learn to take a cock in his mouth, and spread his legs to be penetrated. The man hadn’t been harsh with him, by all means, and though Erin eventually learned to serve in this capacity well enough, his heart was never in it. He’d often thought of the slave girls – trying to satisfy himself, the few times he was allowed any privacy at all – with the dire knowledge that those days were over. It was the kind of realization that any healthy young man would find it hard to come to terms with, and he’d been no exception. 

However, one incident had helped abate this sexual frustration of his, for a long time to come. 

His young party animal of a master had had many friends, and on a few occasions he’d let himself be persuaded to lend his slave out to them. Erin had liked it even less when his master let other men use him, but a slave that knows what is good for them will show as little discomfort as possible at such things. He’d stayed as passive as he could get away with and had endured the men’s hands on his body, and their cocks inside him. 

His master had had female friends as well, though, and one night one of them had asked for him. 

As nervous as this had made him, Erin had, at first, been excited to be allowed to be with a woman again, but he’d soon realized that it’s a very different thing to satisfy a _free_ woman. The woman had demanded he be a bit more active than the men did, and that wasn’t something he was used to when it came to free people – in _any_ capacity. In spite of his health and youth, and no matter what he tried, he’d not been able to get an erection. Erin had simply been too intimidated by the task, and too nervous.

The woman had been furious. 

She’d hit him in the face and flogged him with a belt, but none of it had hurt nearly as much as her words, telling him how worthless, bad, and insulting he was. His master’s anger – for displeasing his guest – had also been utterly uncomfortable, and not so little frightening, though, in the end, he hadn’t been further punished. 

That night Erin had done something he couldn’t remember having done since he was a very small boy – he’d cried himself to sleep, though more from shame, than the stinging welts.

So, when his current mistress, and her husband, had bought him, and he’d been informed that his duties would include satisfying her sexually he’d nearly cried again, right in front of them. Erin hadn’t been able to imagine it would end in anything else than disaster.

It hadn’t. 

His mistress’ husband had obviously not minded that his wife took pleasure in a younger man when he, tired after long days managing the business that had made them wealthy, was not up to the task. However, he was very conservative on some points. The master of the house had asked something in return for letting this kind of plaything into their house, and, so, the mistress had promised not to let the slave fuck her. His wife playing with a lowly slave – who would of course never count as any kind of competition – was socially acceptable, as well as vastly preferable to the risk of being cheated on with another free man, but the master still couldn’t accept _that_. 

While they brought him home, Erin had been informed of this detail, as well, though it had sounded much more like a very open threat to him. The master had taken him aside and warned him of what he would, literally, lose if he would ever disobey his order. The master had scared the living daylights out of him, but at the same time it had been a big relief to learn this. It wouldn’t be expected of him that he get an erection on demand, and so he wouldn’t be punished, and made to feel bad and worthless, when he inevitably would fail to.

Erin thought back on the first weeks with the mistress, and his cheeks glowed. After being with the young slave girls he’d thought he knew something about sex… he hadn’t. He hadn’t known anything at all about women and what satisfied them. It was shameful thinking back on how much time and patience the mistress had put in teaching him, and forming him according to her preferences. In the beginning, he must have seemed a hopeless case to her. 

He’d been nervous, passive, impotent, and scared of making a mistake, and hadn’t seen how he could be of any sexual satisfaction to her at all when he wasn’t even allowed to penetrate her. How childish and stupid he’d been to think that all a woman would need was a cock inserted. He soon got to learn his fumbles in the dark as a teenager had taught him very little of a woman’s body, and how much a man can do with his mouth, his hands and, not least, his mind that can please her ever as much, or, even more.

His mistress loved to be touched and massaged, held and caressed, and Erin had learnt just where a light hand would make her shiver in pleasure, or where a more firm hand would make her squirm in delight. He’d learnt how a flickering tongue made her nipples harden, and how she could never get enough of his face buried deep between her legs, sucking and nibbling her clitoris, his tongue being allowed a certain penetration, after all, where his cock wasn’t. Yes, she liked these things, and she liked when he knelt in front of her and looked up at her, eagerness to serve written all over his face. 

He would beg her to allow him to serve, and she would shiver in delight at this.

Erin felt his cock twitch a little, thinking of these things only. He’d eventually become pleasing to his mistress, which now was his sole source of pride… and lust. With the renewed confidence of being a good slave his erection had returned. The mistress was, of course, and rightfully so, mostly interested in her own pleasure, and the orgasms he gave her, with his mouth between her legs. However, that didn’t mean she wasn’t also quite delighted in his cock when it was fully erected. It often amused her to see him stroke himself to release in front of her, and she sometimes said he was particularly beautiful just when orgasm overcame him and he spurted. 

However, he was being a good slave, not a lover, and this difference was being made clear to him in many ways, from the master’s cold indifference of his very existence, to the fact that the mistress had never once kissed him. 

Free people kiss each other; a slave is usually not invited to that level of intimacy.

Erin finally decided he couldn’t make the bunch of wild flowers look any better. It was far from the elegant bouquets of a flower shop, but at least the scent they omitted would be hard to beat, he tried to encourage himself. Was he pushing a limit here? Was this too intimate? The simple fact that he was unsure should have made him throw the flowers away, but again he ignored this inner voice of warning. He fetched a piece of paper and a pen from the mistress’ desk, instead. 

Flowers for someone’s birthday must come with a card, right?

He’d been taught to read and write as a child, but only the basics. Erin got by reading texts that weren’t too complicated, and could, if need be, scribble down a message on a note paper for his mistress. However, he had, of course, never written anything like this before. Folding the paper in half and opening it again, he decided to keep it simple. He had to think hard on how you might spell ‘congratulations’, but finally he wrote ‘Congradelasions Mistres’. He quickly closed the folded paper again, and shoved it deep in between the stems.

**\-----o0o-----**

The morning proceeded as normal. He woke the mistress up and she smiled at him and patted him on top the head where he knelt at her bed to shyly wish her a happy birthday. She made a joke about how awfully old she was, but the sigh, as she pulled a robe on in front the full size mirror in her bedroom, told him she wasn’t really joking.

He’d overheard her talking to one of her friends about the same thing on the phone only a few days ago. She’d said she couldn’t believe she would soon be fifty. Time moved ever faster, she’d sighed, and it was no fun becoming old and ugly. She’d sounded both depressed and angry. In the end she’d laughed bitterly and said she wanted to burn all those fashion magazines with the perfect twenty five year old models. Who could live up to that? 

Erin had never tried to read the magazines and books his mistress kept in her bedroom, but hearing that conversation he’d opened a few of those magazines in secret and looked through the pictures. It was true that his mistress didn’t look like the girls on those pages, he could see that, but he was stunned that it made her think she was _ugly_. To him her skin was soft and warm under his fingers. When she looked at him, her eyes were so kind, and her thighs might be strong as they wrapped around his neck, pulling him closer, but she was always so gentle. She was respected by other free people too, Erin had seen that. She was experienced and strong, and a hell of a lot smarter than he could ever be! 

It wasn’t that she was a goddess; he knew she had flaws and weaknesses, but she was his _mistress_! No flaws could make her ugly in his eyes, none of the models in those magazines could compare. 

He’d wished he could tell her those things, in some way, but he’d always been awfully bad with words, beyond what a slave learns to say not to offend or annoy their betters. Besides, he doubted it would make her feel better. A slave’s opinions were only worth that much, after all. 

He served as usual while she made ready for the day, bringing her what she wanted, brushing her hair and making her bed. She small-talked with him, as she usually did, informing him of the day before them. Erin was told the master of the house would soon fetch her for a luxurious birthday breakfast at the Grand Hôtel in the city and, so, she would only have tea this morning. 

Erin tried to stay attentive but he was increasingly more nervous. When she would go out to the breakfast table to be served her tea, she would see the flowers. There was no longer anything he could do about it. He wondered if it wouldn’t be best if he admitted what he’d done _before_ she saw them, but his courage failed him. 

Erin didn’t say a word as he followed her to the table.

He pulled a chair out for her, tense as a bow string, and left with his eyes on the floor, to make her tea, avoiding looking at either the flowers, or his mistress. When he came back with the tray, she had stood up again, and was leaning over the table to smell the flowers, touching at the petals. She looked puzzled.

“Erin,” she said. “Did someone have these delivered this early already?”

He couldn’t answer for the life of him. Erin walked into the room like an automaton to put the tea tray on the table and pour the cup.

She didn’t sit down, her eyes still on the flowers. “But… These are wild flowers,” she said, looking ever more confused. Then she found the card, or rather, the sheet of paper from her desk, folded in half, with his scrawled birthday wish inside. Her eyebrows came up as she read it and she slowly turned to look at him. She might have recognized his handwriting. 

Erin wanted to die when he, for a second, dared glance up at her. There was still only that confused look on her face, no smile, no warmth in her eyes. 

“Did _you_ pick these?” she asked.

He couldn’t lie to her, but it was all that he managed to press out a ‘yes, mistress’ his gaze speedily dropping to the floor again. 

“That’s… a very unusual thing for a slave to do…” she remarked.

That might have been the words that doomed him, but he wasn’t to know for sure. They were interrupted by the master, who, restless and stressed as always, rushed into the room. Suddenly Erin’s existence was forgotten, right along with the bunch of wild flowers. 

She grabbed her purse, and summer coat, and they were gone.

Left standing alone by the table, still holding the pot of tea, there was nothing left for Erin than to sorely regret his immense stupidity. Now he really wanted to throw those flowers away, but he couldn’t very well do that, now that she’d already seen them. If there was punishment to come for his presumptions, it wouldn’t help him if he tried to clear away the evidence of his crime.

**\-----o0o-----**

He was left wondering just how bad he had sinned, all day.

Whatever she was thinking, she had no time to let him know. She came back to her rooms a few times during the day, by all means, but only to freshen up, or change clothes. Nothing was said before she was off again. 

One part of him hoped she’d simply completely forgotten about the whole thing, but another part almost preferred punishment, before having made a gesture so utterly insignificant she would forget it just turning her head. 

When, late at night, she finally returned to go to sleep, Erin was such a bundle of nerves he was almost prepared to talk out of turn, rudely asking her what she meant to do, thinking he could stand the suspension no longer. Whatever his destiny was, by now, he only wanted to know. However, the slave was deep in him. Demanding to know his owner’s thoughts and plans was simply not appropriate, not even, or especially not, when they regarded himself. 

Besides, she was tired from a long day of celebrating, and a bit tipsy, too, from the party they’d held. She was obviously not in the mood to talk to him, and dismissed him with a wave of her hand before throwing herself on the bed, ordering him to switch all the lights off as he left.

Erin spent most of the night as he had the day, constantly replaying the moment when she’d looked up from the flowers and given him that confused expression. ‘Did _you_ pick these?’ she had said. ‘That’s a very unusual thing for a slave to do’. 

His mind was spinning trying to interpret what her words and expression could have meant. The more he obsessed about it the more worried he got, until he actually _wished_ for a harsh flogging, if only it meant that he wasn’t totally out of her favor. What if she would even throw him out because of this? 

What if she simply replaced him? 

Erin knew full well that he could be discarded at any time, anyway. There were, of course, never any guarantees she wouldn’t simply tire of him one day, for whatever reason, and get herself a new young man to serve her and satisfy her. 

Already in the slave dealer’s examination room she’d said she was delighted with his looks, but when her husband had pointed out the flaws, she had nodded, agreeing he might not be perfect. ‘I suppose he looks nice enough’, the master had said. ‘But surely they could find her a boy that didn’t have a gap between his front teeth wide enough to stick a pencil between them!’ In the end they’d managed to haggle down his price, only because of that. Yes, one day she might decide she wanted a slave that had nice teeth instead, and sell him. It happened, after all. 

Owners tiring of you… It had happened to him before, it would most surely happen again, and it would probably devastate him when it did. However, to be discarded because of his own stupidity, because he had _offended_ his mistress… 

The thought was almost too much to bear.

**\-----o0o-----**

Next morning, if he had woke her up, as usual, Erin would have broken down, begging her to tell him just how bad he’d sinned, and then he would have done anything to show her he _did_ know his place, and would never do such a thing again. However, she’d made clear the night before she wanted to sleep in this morning, and it wasn’t him that finally woke her up, but the phone at her nightstand.

Erin had been sitting outside her bedroom door, ever since he’d woken up himself a few hours earlier, and couldn’t help overhearing. Her ‘hello’ was croaky and she sounded annoyed, probably from being disturbed in her sleep. That changed completely when Erin heard her saying a name he recognized as belonging to one of her best female friends. “No, no, that’s all right,” she said, sounding considerably friendlier. “I really shouldn’t sleep all day…” 

He only listened with half an ear while they seemed to gossip about the people at her birthday party the night before, but suddenly, something his mistress said, made him tense up. 

“No… no, really, he did. It’s still on the table… a _huge_ bunch of wild flowers. Yes, I swear. He’d even made a card of sorts. Misspelled of course, but…” His mistress laughed softly. 

Erin turned to put his ear to the door. He really didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but he couldn’t help himself when he realized that they were talking about him. He turned cold all over, and his stomach was churning. She hadn’t forgotten about what he’d done at all.

“I know, but… It was just the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. I know it’s not appropriate, Rita, but when you’ve been married for this damn long… It’s not as if I’m complaining. Ralph always arranges the nicest birthdays, but that’s just it, he _arranges_ them. Yes, exactly, they open their wallets; that’s what they do! It’s not like Ralph would actually _do_ anything himself. I mean, could you imagine him bending down to pick as much as a single flower? Oh no, he has long stem roses delivered… Exactly! How many long stem roses can you have delivered to you in your life and still feel that it actually _means_ something!”

Erin shook at her words. He didn’t understand.

“But that boy, he had actually picked all those flowers, all by himself, as if he actually _cares_!” 

Yes, Erin thought, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead to the door; that was all he’d wanted to say. That was all he had wanted to show her… 

She sighed deeply. “I had to think about it all day yesterday, I was actually… touched. Oh, shut up, Rita! I’m not ‘turning all mushy in my old days’, I’m serious…”

They changed the subject again and Erin quietly got to his feet and sneaked back to his room. He was obviously not meant to have overheard that, and he had better not let on that he had. It was on shaking legs that he went. He _had_ overstepped the boundaries by trying to give her a birthday present. It wasn’t appropriate, she’d agreed with her friend that it wasn’t, and still… She wasn’t angry with him. She had understood what he was trying to say, and she was touched even. 

Erin wasn’t sure that this bold venture of his wouldn’t still be punished, but he could take that, now that he knew how she felt. He wasn’t out of her favor; that was worth a thrashing.

Eventually she called for him, ordering him to make her tea while she took a quick shower. When he brought the tray to the table she was already waiting. She only had her robe on, and her hair was damp, her face still a bit tired from last night’s partying. The flowers hadn’t been moved, the makeshift card leaning against the vase. She smiled at him as he put the tray down.

“The flowers are lovely,” she said. “They have an amazing scent.”

Erin could stand it no more; he put the teapot down and fell to his knees, bowing down so deeply his forehead touched the floorboards at her feet. “Mistress, I’m sorry. I… I’ll never do anything like this again, never… I…”

She reached down and patted his head, telling him to sit up. It was all he could muster to meet her eyes as she told him to. “I suppose it would be best if you didn’t,” she said. “But…”

To his utter amazement she leaned down and very lightly pressed her lips against his.

“Thank you, Erin,” she whispered in his ear.

Erin shook as he got to his feet and reached for the teapot again. She’d kissed him. His mistress had _kissed_ him.


End file.
